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MOMMIES, DADDIES, DONORS, SURROGATES: Answering Tough Questions and Building Strong Families
Diane Ehrensaft PhD
The overarching theme of this book is an analysis of the difficult questions and very personal situations that arise from the use of some form or other of what Dr Ehrensaft refers to as a ‘birth other’ to acquire a child to raise as one’s own; this includes parents who have used donor sperm, donor eggs, donor embryos or gestational surrogates, or indeed any combination of these. As a developmental and clinical psychologist, the author is certainly well informed from her twenty years of experience in the field of counseling parents of children born of the fruits of assisted reproductive technologies, and refers to her own experiential growth throughout this period as a good sense guide to one’s own growth of knowledge.
It is through this same period of time that Dr Ehrensaft has observed the professional shift from the need for anonymity of the donor(s), to one of realization that disclosure of the involvement of a ‘birth other’ is paramount for the welfare of the child. Society is definitely still playing catch up in this regard, and she makes a strong case for fertility clinics and facilitating agencies to work much harder at building bridges between the ‘before baby’ and ‘after baby’ professional care givers, without overstating her stance that professional counseling should be involved at every step of the process in the ever-expanding field of reproductive technology.
When reviewing a book, rule number one has to be retention of an objective eye to give a balanced appraisal of how well a book is written, and its relevance and worth to its target audience. While this reviewer has much to apply in terms of technical and practical experience in the weird, wonderful and whacky world of assisted reproduction, it occurred to me throughout this well-written ‘self-help-style’ book, that my over-riding perspective was that of a parent. This is probably because Dr Ehrensaft engages her audience on an emotional level extremely well, with a constant stream of illustrative anecdote and plain old good advice.
Dr Ehrensaft’s mantra can be distilled into the phrase: ‘doing what’s in the best interests of the child’, and she applies this simple defining tool to attempt to bring commonsense and sanity to the often time emotionally charged mess of guilt, fear and frustration that can be experienced by the range of ‘family models’ that she covers in this expansive book. She also weighs in on how this common sense lens of hers could much better serve the legal morass of parent rights or lack therof when ‘birth others’ are involved.
My one criticism of the book might be the almost perfunctory nod toward comment on the ‘wow’ factor of evolving ‘repro-tech’. However, as this is not a major element of her book, it allows the book to stand (and not age) as a solid and very useful reference for all those who have come to parenting in less mainstream ways.
Dr. Michael Tucker
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